February Reflections

2020 brought some bizarre things like a worldwide pandemic and lots of new experiences like wearing masks, social distancing, locking your doors for fear someone would break in to steal your toilet paper, hand sanitizer that smelled like horse manure. But for me those things were just distractions. February, before all the Covid craziness, was actually my hardest month of 2020. In fact, if I had to rank the worst months of my life, September 2019 when Luke went into treatment, November 2019 when Luke passed away, and then February 2020. This February (2021) has not felt as heavy and I’m grateful for that. I am seeing that perhaps there are better days ahead; the light at the end of the tunnel is far off in the distance, but at least visible to me.

Last February hit me like a gut punch. First thing I noticed was a lot of anger and strong emotions starting to well up. I have spent a great deal of my grief journey, 15 months today, feeling numb and in shock. I have read that that is very common for suicide survivors. Of course I’ve cycled in and out of all of the emotions typical with grief, but anger really came to the surface at this time. These emotions are exhausting and difficult to wade through. And that’s what grief is. It’s wading through so many negative and hard emotions until it’s done. It really is like a roller coaster that you didn’t want to go on and don’t enjoy. You are at its mercy. It sucks.

We had Kate, our oldest, home for Christmas last year and most of January. She was sent home from her mission temporarily to recover from being sick. The first couple of weeks she just slept most of the time, but after that, we got to spend so much time with her and got used to having her home again. She was kind of mad about being home and mad that it took so long for her to get permission to go back out. I told her we would consider it an extended christmas break so I left up all our Christmas decorations and promised we wouldn’t take them down until she left. She finally left at the end of January, so first of February we started taking down the Christmas tree and all the decorations. I kinda fell apart. That made me so sad to take down the tree. It was the first sign of having to move on. 

Also around this time I noticed the radio stations playing new songs. It occurred to me these were songs Luke didn’t know. Songs that had come out since Luke died. Time was marching on. How profoundly sad that made me. The old songs sometimes made me cry, but I loved hearing them because they were tied to memories of being with Luke, long road trips and short car trips. I always had the radio on. When Luke was in treatment I had to do a lot of driving back and forth to the stress center and we listened to so much music. Luke had his preferences, some of which I really hated. We finally made a deal where he got the first 20 minutes to listen to his stuff and I got the last 20 minutes to listen to mine. It was our little thing. I loved making him listen to my favorite hillbilly country songs or 80’s pop songs and he loved making me listen to Lizzo and Billie Eilish. So when new songs started showing up, I again lost it. Luke would never know these songs. Luke was gone and the world was moving on without him. Oh how painful that realization was.

Then perhaps the worst of all was dealing with Ryan’s birthday. He’s our youngest and his birthday is in February. His birth was traumatic and there is much to be grateful for in how it turned out. Up until last year, every February was a time of reflection and gratitude for the miracle that Ryan is alive and healthy and that I am still here. The quick version is I had complications during labor which necessitated an emergency C-section. I was put under general anesthesia. Ryan was born with no pulse, but after a full minute of chest compressions they brought him back. During the C-section I went into DIC and nearly bled to death. I spent 2 days in the ICU after giving birth. Despite Ryan being without oxygen for at least 5 minutes and me losing half my blood volume and needing to be on a ventilator, neither of us has any lasting health issues. An absolute miracle. Even the doctors said it was remarkable. 

Ryan’s birth was an unexpected disaster. I was healthy and young. We did not know we would need a miracle. We did nothing to bring it about. It just happened. Luke, on the other hand, was a slow moving train wreck for which we prayed, begged, and pleaded for help from God and lots of others. We worked hard for a miracle. By that I mean we did everything we could do, including enlisting professional help, as well as praying and fasting and hoping that God would do the rest. Do you see my dilemma here? Why did God save one son and not the other? I know not everyone believes in God, but for the believers, this kind of moment is what tests you. I felt shaken. None of it made sense. So I’m left with this very confusing scenario that God knew the struggle Luke was in and heard the pleas of our family and others who knew, and He did not intervene. But when Ryan and I struggled in childbirth, He knew and took care of us. For the first time I truly understood how someone could choose to walk away from their beliefs and faith in God. I understood losing trust in everything that used to make sense.

After Ryan’s birth, I struggled to know why that had to happen. Like, “God, what was the point of that? Did I really have to go through that? I’m grateful, but seriously, we could have just bypassed that whole placental abruption thing.” I’m one that believes God already knows what we’re thinking anyway so we might as well be honest when we pray. After many months, might have even been a year, I got an answer. I felt strongly that that experience was to remind me how much God loves me and that I can trust Him. I thought that was kind of obvious. I have always believed in God and believed He loved me. I felt I could trust Him. Why would I ever doubt that? What could ever happen to make me confused about something so basic? I really had those thoughts.  

Fast forward a few years. Guess He knew me more than I realized...

So, this February I celebrate that it’s not last February. I celebrate Ryan and his extraordinary birthday. I celebrate the fact that I’m still here and know I have so much more to learn and do. And for the record, I still hate Billie Eilish songs, but I have come to enjoy Lizzo and Ariana and actually kind of crave hearing the stuff Luke used to listen to. ❤